Athleisure Is Officially In the Dictionary, But What Does It Mean?

It's official: Come 2016, the eye roll-inducing label given to the fashion world's fascination with evolved workout layers (slim tapered sweats, neoprene hoodies) will be added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. According to Merriam-Webster, via The New York Times, athleisure will be defined as "casual clothing designed to be worn both for exercising and for general use." It's a fairly vague definition, but an appropriate one considering the trend has never been able to be defined by a single look.

As a trend, athleisure's ascent from industry shorthand to English word is really the result of three things: the general dressing down across our culture, high fashion brands turning sweats and tees into big ticket items, and retailers moving more performance apparel than ever before. It's a perfect storm of sorts, where every entry point in the market can be saturated with product to sustain the trend for the long haul. The guy who's buying Balmain moto sweatpants might not be the same one buying Old Navy joggers, but they're both in on the trend. And that's the key point that separates athleisure from other recent trends that have hit the mainstream (normcore, anyone?): it's new but also inclusive. So maybe it does deserve to be officially recognized in a reference book.

That still doesn't mean we like the name, though. For our money, SportsCore is where it's at.